I know the U2 song "With Or Without You" is not about children and parents, but sometimes it's the only song I can think of to relate to not getting along with family, even when you love them.

Walking On Eggshells is a book I just discovered and it seems like it's going to be helpful. Adult children can feel like they're ten again when they visit their parents, even it's just for a day. Being ten again sounds cute, but it's not for anyone whose parents still try and dictate every move of their adult lives.

You can love someone dearly, with all your soul, and still not get along with them like you did at an earlier point in time. What your parents ask of you at age ten should not be what they ask of you as an adult.

My dad and I have never been close...he's such a quiet man and drawing him out in conversation is almost impossible...so that relationship has never really changed. His way of showing he cares is asking if my car is all ready for winter or if my computer security software has been updated. My mom, on the other hand, is extremely outgoing with a stormy nature. You never have to guess with her, never. Up until my late 30s, we were very close. Her showing she cared wasn't so coded nor were her emotions, good or bad.

In the past five years, though, it's been tricky. I want to figure out how to make my parents happy without sacrificing myself. I don't want to be selfish, but I don't want to be smothered either. I miss the mother I knew growing up, who was a free thinker and loved music and dancing and...well, just living. She believed in God, but didn't believe that meant shutting down from all forms of earthly enjoyment. Now, if it  isn't Old Testament, she won't have anything to do with it.

I'm hoping Walking With Eggshells can help me. If not, I'll keep looking for more books that can help. Because it's clear my parents are not going to change the way they worry and question my every decision, the way they want me to believe in God, so I've got to change how I react to and behave with them.

more odds and ends

 
 
 

much-needed perspective
helpful article

 

 

Also helpful in down times is watching Misery Bear videos on YouTube:

Misery Bear Prepares For A Date

 

 

 

 

 

I can definitely make peace with never finding true love, but I will never truly be okay until I stop pining for someone totally inappropriate and out of my solar system.

 

It's not just the guilt (though that's a huge part) but the futility of it all. Why would a person feel like that about someone so clearly unavailable, inappropriate and (duh!) uninterested, the "uninterested" both blatantly obvious and the only way it could be.

It’s funny. In film and tv shows (more than books) unrequited love may start out that way and the pain may be intense, but it almost always turns out the recepient of that love feels the same way. In real life, the intensity is just as strong and the feelings the same as in romantic film or tv, but from there it greatly, greatly differs. Also funny how you can love (or think you love) someone so much and it’s all only on you. Just you.

 

This article on dealing with a crush is helpful, if not particularly arranged in a well-organized style. This passage particularly stands out:

If need be, pretend like your #crush isn't there at all, especially if that's what you have to do to keep things on a professional level.


http://allwomenstalk.com/7-ways-to-handle-a-crush-on-a-co-worker/6/



 

It's cute in a way, till you cannot speak

And you leave to have a cigarette, knees get weak

 escape was just a nod and a casual wave

 Obsess about it, heavy for the next two days

It's only just a crush, it'll go away

 It's just like all the others it'll go away

 Or maybe this is danger and you just don't know

 You pray it all away but it continues to grow

from "Tear You Apart" by She Wants Revenge

 

But songs only seem to fuel intense emotions so I think I'll take a book instead. And one particularly surprisingly good read is something I started reading last night:

It's so good I've been able to escape some from real life. I've always liked The Moonstone and The Woman In White, but after going through this:

 

I've discovered so many more novels he wrote, ones that are completely free on Kindle and Google Play.

Many people, it seems, can't read when they're upset over something. I totally get that, but with me it's music I can't listen to when I'm depressed (except classical) and books I turn to for a quick getaway.

 

 

Such a beautiful song, "Inside Of Love" by Nada Surf is...and the video is pretty good at capturing how overwhelming it all is. It's weird but sometimes I find if I listen to sad songs when I'm sad I actually free the feelings up a bit and they kind of go away.

 

 

Watch video here



 

 

Watching terrible tv

 It kills all thought

 Getting spacier than

 An astronaut

 Making out with people

 I hardly know or like

 I can't believe what i do

 Late at night

 I wanna know what it's like

 On the inside of love

 I'm standing at the gates

 I see the beauty above

 Only when we get to see

 The aerial view

 Will the patterns show

 We'll know what to do

 I know the last page so well

 I can't see the first

 So i just don't start

 It's getting worse

 [chorus]

 I can't find my way in

 I try again and again

 I'm on the outside of love

 Always under or above

 Must be a different view

 To be a me with a you

 Of course I'll be alright

 I just had a bad night



It's weird, but some of my good dreams seem to have something to do with the zombie apocalypse. They are always so vivid and as scary as the situation is it's the non-zombie parts that make the dreams good...the people who come together and unite against it, for instance.

In the most recent version of this recurring dream, I was trapped with my co-workers. One of them, someone I look up to, but am not close with, started singing and this peace came over all of us, even though the world was literally (I normally don't care for "literally" since it's so often used it's lost all meaning) going to Hell.

The song, not so surprisingly if you think about it, was "Ave Maria." Between actually having heard this person sing it before in real life (marvelously so, at that!) and it being in a horror movie I watched the same night I had the dream, it makes its own kind of sense.

Since dream interpretation aspires (or seems to) to be one thing to many people, I often find it kind of lacking, but I still checked this site out for "zombie" dreams: read here

I long to be more fearless. With others we can be even stronger...but sometimes we don't have others in our lives or we need to be strong for them so we have to buck up for them and for ourselves. I bought this necklace (from the Lovesick company) to give me a sense (however unreal it may be) that I can be fearless! I will be!

I hardly know anything about love and certainly less about weddings and marriage, but you can still dream about things you don't personally experience...and know that love, fidelity and commitment are as part of your make-up as your eye and hair color. If you can't find someone else who is made up like that as well, then searching for love is incredibly (incredibly!) difficult.

Having been torn most of my adult life between trying not to be something my parents despise and longing to find true love, I honestly believe it's only circumstances and stereotypes I wish weren't true that have kept me single and celibate. I have never ever been an advocate of generalizations and smear campaigns, but it seems to me it's very hard to meet other gay women who believe in old-fashioned love and romance, not to mention marriage.

I have spent much of the past few years replacing my non-existent love life with romance novels. Some times, I'm lucky and find ones that reflect my values. At others, I find ones like these...

While nowhere near as good as her Forbidden Passions, Ruth Gogoll's L as In Love is fast-paced, interesting and like a much less dramatically draining PG version of Showtime's L Word. Major pet peeve: lack of character descriptions and the character of Marlene (with her verbal abuse and use of sex as the answer to everything) is so unbelievably dislikeable it's hard to fathom anyone going near her. I keep reading because Ruth Gogoll and Susan Way make a great writing team.

The lack of being faithful to their girlfriends on the part of most of the characters is why I found L Word so hard to watch at times. The amount of people in the novel keeps any one story from being fully realized, so this is part of a four book series. I suppose I'll start the next one in the hopes that someone finds true love. :)

And on the themes of love and marriage (ideally together and never apart), this is a little story I wrote from my heart and imagination:

 

 

Wedding Night Jitters

 

My brand new wife was finishing up in the bathroom and as I waited for her in our honeymoon suite bed I became a nervous wreck.

There was no guidebook for this, despite how many romance novels I had read in my lifetime. Andi and I had been a couple for over a year and our situation was so uncommon that if we had told anyone else about it they would have thought we were insane. These days who waited for their wedding night to have sex with each other for the very first time? And how often were at least one of them still a virgin?

Andi had sworn the whole time we dated she was okay with it and I had believed it, still believed her. It seemed incredible, looking back now, that she had never once given me even a moment’s lip about my being a virgin and wanting to wait for marriage.

So the fact that she was hiding in the bathroom and I was the one eagerly waiting for her to come out would have made it all a bit funny if I wasn’t so damned nervous.

“What’s wrong?” I’d whispered during our quiet and very intimate oceanside dinner, the waves a wonderful soundtrack to our heightened emotions. “Your hands are shaking.”

Andi had put her wine glass down and stared straight into my eyes in this way she had that completely undid me every time, made me believe we were each other’s home, always and forever..which given how each of our families had permanently abandoned us upon coming out was no exaggeration. She laughed, but it was a bit hysterical, the way she laughed when she had something unpleasant to tell me. “It just hit me.”

“What?” I asked gently, taking her hand in mine, loving that she didn’t hesitate to take it in her hands, never hesitated, no matter where we were.

“That I’m going to be your first.” She paused, then laughed again, even more shrill this time. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“What?!” This time I wasn’t so gentle, panic and fear choking my throat. “Are you suddenly sorry that we waited? Are you sorry about-”

“No! No, sweetheart, of course not. I love that we waited and I think it’s very special that you feel how you do about…you know,” she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “love and sex and marriage.” She paused as she straightened back up a bit.”But it just hit me that I-I have never felt less jaded or been more scared about being with someone that way. It just…it just really hit me. That’s all. I’m shaking because it’s here, our night…it’s here. You and me. Tonight. Together. In one bed.”

“Wow.” I felt like Christmas morning and Happily Ever After and all the other wonderful things that didn’t last long had buddled themselves up together, ready to stay put for as long as I wanted.

“Wow?”

“We’re finally here in Hawaii and all I want is to go back to our room. Right now.”

“But our food hasn’t gotten here yet.” Her eyes twinkled.

“I know. But I don’t think I can wait another second. We’re married now. It’s official. And I love you so much I can’t see straight. I think my eyes are actually starting to cross.”

“You know, now that you mention it.” She still held my hand.

“I’ll be a good girl and wait, if you like.”

“I can’t wait another second, either. Even if they can’t send the food back, I don’t care. Let them bill us. I just want to get back to the room.”

 

And we had gone back. But Andi had been in the bathroom a long time and I was starting to worry it was because she couldn’t face me, that she was wondering what she’d gotten herself into with this.

I had just slid out of bed and started to the other side of the room when the door opened and she stepped out.

I swallowed so hard at the sight of her you could hear the sound all through the room. “Oh, Andi.” I paused, searching for the right words. And I could do was say was her name again.

“I’m sorry I stayed in there so long, Teddie. I’m so scared. I didn’t think I would be. But I am. Terrified, actually.”

“Terrified?” By now I stood in front of her, reaching out to stroke the side of her face, loving that she looked so hearbreakingly vulnerable in her sheer but stately floor length nightgown.

“Before I met you, I slept around a lot. I…I never ever thought I would want to wait like we have and now here we are, waiting, and I am both so ready and so scared and I…I feel like the virgin. I do.”

“You do?” I kissed her cheek. “Really?...And…and you’re not sorry that I am?”

“No, not at all. Do you mind about my past?” For a second, fear seemed to flash in her eyes…fear in my Andi’s eyes!!

“Of course not. No way. I love you and I hope I can always show you how much. Tonight is one of the ways I hope to, but I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You could never disappoint me, sweetheart.”

“But…”

“Maybe it’s time we both stop talking.” She took me in her arms and that was it. My trembling took over and all I could see was her mouth moving closer to mine.

“This is it, isn’t it? Oh, Andi.”

“Shush,” she said and I could feel her smile against my mouth as she walked us backwards to the bed and we started falling, in slomo, it seemed.

When we hit the bed it felt like Cloud 9, below, above and everywhere else, not because it was straight of Hollywood, but because each of us, in her own way searching and wading through loneliness, had finally found our elusive, perfection connection with another soul.